Greater London elections
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From the Election Department Well, last night we had a bit of fun, leafleting Wimbledon. Always nice to meet a new set of letter boxes. We then went on to leaflet a hustings in Wimbledon. We hadn’t been invited onto the platform. A nice posh lady explained they wanted to talk about “substantive issues” and there would have been too many on the platform if they’d invited everyone. Strange considering there have been hustings in the past with over 10 candidates on the platform that covered substantive issues quite well. Not a particularly good reason to restrict the range of debate. Of course, they are entitled to do this so long as the cost of the meeting is shared between the candidates so promoted. Our next port of call was in Colliers Wood, where we caught the end of a TUSC meeting. About 20 people present, almost all committed members of one sect or other. They have tried to form the loosest alliance possible, but still cannot agree even within that. Thanks to the comrades who came out last night.
Two comrades went last night in the rain to a hustings in a cavernous church in Norwood (at the southern end of Lambeth on the borders with Southwark and Croydon and where Ken Livingstone comes from). A bit of a repeat of the one up the road in Herne Hill last week with the same candidates making the same speeches. As the audience was much older there weren’t so many questions on cycle lanes (though this did come up), more about the South Circular Road which passes through Norwood (not surprising, since we were caught in a traffic jam getting there). Danny did get a chance to talk about wider issues as there were questions on unemployment (you can’t have capitalism without a reserve army of unemployed which expands and contracts with the business cycle and is currently expanding) and why people aren’t interested in politics (because they are alienated from the system as they perceive it to be subject to impersonal economic forces they know they can’t control). He also spoke about socialism and afterwards was approached by one person who said that it wouldn’t work because of “human nature” and another who said it wouldn’t work because people were greedy and selfish. Where have we heard that before? This was the fourth hustings we’ve been to. They were all attended overwhelmingly by what sociologists would call “white middle class” people concerned about local amenities. So a difficult audience to put our case to. Still, they provide an opportunity to put our views across and to raise our political profile with our opponents. At least if they read the booklet sent out earlier this week by the Greater London Returning Officer to all 5.8 million electors in London. We feature on page 25 of the booklet which those outside London can download from here:- (page 13 of the pdf download) http://www.londonelects.org.uk/news-centre/information-bookletDon’t forget the GLA Election Rally at Head Office this Saturday (April 28th) at 4.00pmhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/election-meeting-londonAnd the literature stall from 11.00amhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/literature-stall-outside-head-office-1
Last week we reported that our Green Party opponent in Vauxhall in the general election last year had resigned from the Green Party. Now we learn that the Trotskyist group, Workers Power, which also stood against us has split. (Hadn’t realised they regarded North Korea as a “workers state”. How nutty can you get?) Was it something we did or said? http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/green-sees-light.htmlhttp://www.workersliberty.org/story/2012/04/18/workers%E2%80%99-power-splits
Here is a video interview the on-line London magazine, the Big Smoke, did with Daniel Lambert, our candidate in Lambeth & Southwark. Technical difficulties prevented them putting it up earlier, but better late than never.http://www.bigsmoke.org.uk/?p=77382
Video interview with Danny Lambert now available to watch on YouTube:-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fzGmajVtDA&feature=player_embedded#! This website:-http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/videoSOYMB blog:-http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/blog-post.html*************************************************You can follow the progress of the count here.The count is being done electronically. If you’re that interested the process is explained in this short video.
Result for Merton & Wandsworth is 1343 or 0.9% which is about what we expected. This compares with 1714 or 1.0% for the Left List (as the SWP called themselves for the election) at the last GLA election there 4 years ago. And in Lambeth and Southwark we (Danny) got 2938 or 1.9%. Which is more than we got last time (1588) and more than the Left List did too (1956) Full results here:- http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/
Unbelievable! They’ve now announced how many votes were cast in the two areas for the London-wide lists and in both we got more votes than TUSC (the list support by both Militant and the SWP) did in the list vote (whereas we’d have expected it to be the other way round). In Lambeth & Southwark they got 1891 or 1.2% and in Merton & Wandsworth 904 or 0.6%. So quite a few of those who voted for us for the constituency did not vote for TUSC for the London-wide list (1047 in the first and 439 in the second). Don’t know what this means — except that offering attractive reforms doesn’t necessarily get you more votes than standing just for socialism.
Well done all involved. So close to the UKIP result and given the other, for want of a better phrase ‘left’ leaning parties, means more people are waking up to the ideas of change and that there is more than capitalism out there. A step forward.
http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/yeeeesss-spgb-polls-nearly-3000-votes-in-lambeth-and-southwark/I am indeed grateful to General Grumble for pointing this out…………totally incredible achievement……….what does it portend…………the SPGB candidate Daniel Lambert got 2,900 votes……………the comrades long march to socialism through the ballot box has lift off….hats off to the lads and lasses at Clapham high street!!
UPDATE from Ian Bone ******the more i think about it the more wonderful this result is……..the SPGB standing on a pure platform of utopian socialism through the ballot box have outpolled TUSC with its reformist anti-cuts position. Even the SPGB can’t work it out…….
Report of Election Dept on the Greater London election campaign Result: We got 2938 (1.9%) in Lambeth and Southwark (up from 1588 and 1% last time) and 1343 (0.9%) in Merton and Wandsworth (contesting for the first time) Leaflets: Because the date of the election had long been fixed we were able to plan the campaign well in advance and start distributing leaflets as early as March. In all, some 23,000 leaflets were distributed (15,000 by members and 7,000 by a local newspaper). We only received a handful of replies. Publicity: (a) Only one letter in one local paper. In fact, none of the local papers even gave a list of the candidates standing for the constituencies. They seemed to have taken the view that, as this “public service” role was covered by the GLA distributing a booklet listing all the candidates to the 5.8 million electors in London, this absolved them from doing this. (b) This booklet was the main source of information that we were standing (but not what we stood for), but for all Londoners not just those in the areas where we had a candidate. (c) An on-line newspaper, the Big Smoke, did a 10-minute video interview with Danny Lambert, our candidate in Lambeth and Southwark. Even though they only put this up on the day before the election, this was well-done and well-received and will be a useful addition to short videos putting our case. (d) We revived our election blog to inform members and others of the progress of the campaign. Hustings: We took part in 4 and were denied participation in 2. Audiences varied from 30 to 100. The best was in Putney, where Bill Martin, our candidate in Merton and Wandsworth was recorded speaking on the Putney Debates for a BBC2 programme on the history of England. Member participation: About 20 members and 2 sympathisers took part in leaflet distribution, either door-to-door or from literature stalls.Preliminary assessment: The result in terms of votes was not derisory so we didn’t make a fool of ourselves. We raised our political profile and increased our political activity beyond what we would otherwise have done. Got our name distributed to 5.8 million people and a useful short video. Disappointing replies from leafleting and local press.
Danny Lambert on YouTube:-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fzGmajVtDA
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